The New Zealand Herald Premier Series: The Greats

Conductor: Giordano Bellincampi
Violin: Benjamin Morrison

Brahms: Violin Concerto
Schubert: Symphony No.9 ‘The Great’

These two pieces are both monumental and yet also somehow intimate. Brahms’ concerto calls for a violinist of Olympian stamina who can play what is essentially chamber music with the orchestra, and Kiwi Benjamin Morrison from the Vienna Philharmonic is such a musician.

Schubert’s last completed symphony is nicknamed ‘The Great’ with good reason. Robert Schumann’s famous remark about its ‘heavenly length’ hints at the huge dimensions of Schubert’s ideas, but this is only one facet of a work which is, to quote Schumann again, ‘wonderfully full of life’.